We had another fairly chilly night, but things are definitely warming up again. Enough that the outside cats were all running around by the door when I came out this morning!

They were both hungry and thirsty! Even Junk Pile cat didn’t quite run away, waiting for some food. The kibble bowls were all empty, and even their heated water bowl was almost dry. The other bowls were frozen, so they were very happy for the warm water.
We really need to work on getting Creamsicle Jr. to let us near him. I want to get a look at one of his eyes. It seems to be leaky.

This is the same pussy willow I posted a picture of, less than a week ago. It’s really, really trying to develop those catkins! It should be warm enough from now on for them to finally develop fully. The brief cold of the past few days set it back quite a bit.
We never got much snow out of what should be the last winter blow out, and it’s already pretty much gone. Which means things are still very dry out there. I’m hoping we will get some good rain this spring. We’re going to need it!
I received an interesting hint that the weather is warming up and expecting to stay that way. I got a bank notification that a charge from Veseys came through. I expect to soon get a shipping notification. The only things we have with them right now are items that will be shipped when it’s time for planting. It was a very small charge, so not everything that’s waiting is going to be on it’s way, but the ground it still frozen solid. I’m curious to check what we ordered that can be planted this early in the season!
We had another bank transaction that had my husband and I wondering. Something got credited to our account, but neither of recognized the listing it was under. It seemed to be a refund of some sort. It took me a while, but I finally found the original debit, almost a month ago. After some searching, my husband finally figured out it was the new ergonomic keyboard he had ordered for me that we were waiting for (not the only thing we are still waiting for, either). For some reason, we got refunded, but have had no notification. He’d ordered it from this company (the name of which was not what was listed in the bank statements, lending to the confusion) as a “guest” and gave them my email address, but I’d received no notifications from them. I even searched my spam folder. He thinks he may have accidentally put in an old email address of mine that I no longer have. We decided to try and order the keyboard again, but this time he created an account with the company, rather than ordering as “guest”.
Which is when he found out what happened. As soon as he tried to place the order, he got a warning that they don’t ship to box numbers. He never got that warning when ordering as a guest, and since the email address was likely goofed, they couldn’t get through to us to fix the problem, so they canceled the order and refunded the money.
Unfortunately, he’d ordered it originally at a sale price. The sale is over, so this time, it’ll be full price. Ah, well.
While he was going through the purchase, he just had to call me over to see the shipping costs. There were three options, with different expected delivery dates. Two of them were free, but the expedited shipping cost was actually more than the full price of the keyboard. Including taxes!
There was still the issue of their not delivering to box numbers. We don’t get postal delivery, so there’s no point in giving them our physical address. Hardly anyone can find our place, even then. This is not a new problem, unfortunately, but my husband found a workaround. He inputs the physical address for our post office/general store. Since the package would have his name on it, and the population here is so low, the post master knows which box number such packages belong to, so we still get our parcel pick up card in the mail box.
It may still take 2 or 3 weeks to get here, but it should work.
It’s interesting how much more difficult it has been to get things delivered out here today, compared to when I was growing up here. We didn’t even had driveway markers until not all that long ago, but people could still find us with our section number. The modern delivery systems just sort of assume people live in cities and towns, with street addresses. Box numbers are now associated with security problems or scam artists. Never mind that so many people still use box numbers, even if they live in towns. The town we go to for most of our shopping and errands, for example, has an organized street address system (unlike our hamlet, which does have some street names, but no street numbers), but all mail goes to box numbers at the post office. If there is only a street address, the post office employees have to figure out whose box number it belongs to. A little more difficult when the population is several thousand, instead of a couple hundred.
You’d think, with modern technology, it would actually be easier, but the systems don’t recognize section numbers, can’t figure out our rural road systems, and don’t accept box numbers.
So we have to get creative, just to get things to go to our nearest post office!
I love my technology, but sometimes, it just makes things harder! 😀
The Re-Farmer